Ontario Basic Income Network

A network of basic income advocates in Ontario has been building since 2013 - the year that today's Canadian basic income movement began to take off. The first local action group to form was the Kingston Action Group for a Basic Income Guarantee. In 2015 the Kingston group organized the first annual meeting of Ontario advocates and that meeting was held in Kingston in November that year. The second annual meeting was held in November 2016 in Peterborough and was organized by the Peterborough Basic Income Network. At that meeting it was agreed that a provincial network group should be more formally established and, soon after, the Ontario Basic Income Network (OBIN) was named as such.

On November 4th, 2017 the 3rd annual organizing meeting of OBIN was held, this time in Lindsay (one of the three sites of the Ontario government's current 3-year basic income pilot project). The meeting was preceded the day before by a public event organized by OBIN, also held in Lindsay. One of the best developments arising from those two days was adoption of the Lindsay Declaration for a Progressive Basic Income.

In the spring of 2018, individual advocates involved with OBIN agreed to a new Network structure. The structure is based on the concept of individual advocates and local action groups which choose to ‘affiliate’ with each other (within the structure), and to help carry out the work of OBIN. The work of OBIN is now guided by a Coordinating Group including a Facilitator and five coordinators responsible for Network Development, Internal Relations, External Relations, Promotions and Communications, and Special Projects.